For months now, there's been speculation
that researchers might have finally created time crystals - strange
crystals that have an atomic structure that repeats not just in space,
but in time, putting them in perpetual motion without energy.

Now it's official - researchers have just reported in detail how to
make and measure these bizarre crystals. And two independent teams of
scientists claim they've actually created time crystals in the lab based
off this blueprint, confirming the existence of an entirely new form of
matter.

The discovery might sound pretty abstract, but it heralds in a whole
new era in physics - for decades we've been studying matter that's
defined as being 'in equilibrium', such as metals and insulators.

But it's been predicted that there are many more strange types of
matter out there in the Universe that aren't in equilibrium that we
haven't even begun to look into, including time crystals. And now we
know they're real.

The fact that we now have the first example of non-equilibrium matter
could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the world around
us, as well as new technology such as quantum computing. "This is a new phase of matter, period, but it is also really cool
because it is one of the first examples of non-equilibrium matter,"said lead researcher Norman Yao from the University of California, Berkeley."For the last half-century, we have been exploring equilibrium
matter, like metals and insulators. We are just now starting to explore a
whole new landscape of non-equilibrium matter."

Let's take a step back for a second, because the concept of time crystals has been floating around for a few years now.

First predicted by Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczekback in 2012, time crystals are structures that appear to have movement even at their lowest energy state, known as a ground state.

Usually when a material is in ground state, also known as thezero-point energy of a system, it means movement should theoretically be impossible, because that would require it to expend energy.

But Wilczek predicted that this might not actually be the case for time crystals...

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.